Intellectual freedom news roundup

Apparently, according to a friend, S. T. Harnick, an adjunct prof at the University of Illinois got fired

What bit of pedagogy was so verboten that the University of Illinois could no longer abide Prof. Howell’s presence on campus? That would be nothing less than the Church’s teaching concerning homosexual behavior:

“Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY…. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same.”

This bit of Catholic doctrine so offended one student that it resulted in an anonymous message being sent to religion department head Robert McKim complaining of, you guessed it, “hate speech.” The complaining student, however, isn’t even in Prof. Howell’s class:

An unidentified . . . student claimed to be a friend of the offended student. The writer said in the e-mail that his friend wanted to remain anonymous.

Why do I report on this stuff? A key doctrine of Darwinism is that the mind is not real, the brain is merely evolved tissue. So anything can be done to anyone.

Not so fast, Darwinist, not so fast.

You can read another article of interest here:

As the hostilities between the current government and the Tea Party movement have become increasingly rancorous, the division of American society into two cultures holding thoroughly incompatible worldviews has become obvious. In fact, the two forces are clearly on an unavoidable collision course. Although many people may understandably be most interested in knowing which side will prevail, I think an equally important and troubling question is precisely by what means the matter will be resolved. Will reason prevail and the people in power either have their agenda confirmed or step aside gracefully? Or will there be intransigence, increasing conflict, and even violence?

My guess is the latter, as more people will guess that the new aristocracy is, well, a new aristocracy. They want to live good at others’ expense.

I was once in the Toronto transit system, and wanted to dispose of some wrapper, which I supposed was non-recyclable. The employees who happened to be collecting the trash informed me that it did not matter which recycle bin I put it in, because all were just bundled together anyway. That was clearly true, based on the contents of their sacks of trash on the trolley. So it was all just a big fraud, aimed at taking in Toronto people. Useless tax mooches, pretending to do more about the environment.


Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:


Intellectual freedom news roundup

Intellectual freedom news roundup

A friend, S. T. Karnick, has been sending me articles from American Thinker, and I figured I had better post the links, as many may be of interest to readers here:

Karnick tells me that a ratings-hungry US TV host accused a US senator’s daughters of being
prostitutes:

Like anybody else, Griffin has a right to say whatever she want to whoever will listen. And those who oppose her and others’ destruction of the nation’s public discourse have a right to be heard as well. It is time for each of the most egregious instances of behavior such as Griffin’s to be answered directly.

Karnick is right to say that politics in a democratic society is badly served when people resort to such tactics - I assume to win ratings wars in a sinking mainstream media system.

We are having a similar problem here in Canada, where some are seeding a rumour that our Prime Minister and his wife are separating. But when I checked with an informed source, I found that it was not confirmed as true. It may have been a seeded rumour, intended to destabilize his government.

If anyone cares, the fact is, we could end his government at the polls. That is the way our political system is supposed to work.

Intellectual freedom in Canada: News roundup

My friend, Blazing Cat Fur, writes to say, regarding a recent child abuse case where the government is fronting the abuser,

Social Services have abandoned common sense and given primacy to "cultural sensitivity". The hospital staff involved can raise concerns and are doing their best to extend the girl's hospital stay under any pretext they can find, however the decision of Social Services will likely trump any objections they raise.

One thing we need beware is “multicultural inclusiveness”, which can lead to toleration of backward, violent value systems - whether driven by drug and alcohol abuse or religious nuts funded from abroad. Different causes, but same effect.

The second thing we need to beware is social workers. Social workers have been monstrous pests throughout the twentieth century, because their profession tends to be guided by fads, not science - whether the fad is eugenics or recovered memories or cultural inclusiveness (of abuse of women and girls). All I can say, as someone who has been through some tough times, is - just keep them out of your life.

Blazing also informs me, re yet another kowtow to criminal bands:

This farce proves that hate crime laws are nothing more than political tools in the hands of our political fools. Ontario was able to arrest, charge, try and convict an 83 year old Nazi in a period of 6 months. They had 3 years and 2 attempts to lay charges against Slammin Salman Hossain. They thew the Jewish Community an 83 year old bone and spat in their face by giving Hossain plenty of time and warning to flee.

The Salman Hossain charges are a deceitful pantomine performed to cause the least offense to the Muslim community. Cowards.

“Cowards?” Oh, that is too kindly. They are tax mooches. The average coward just wants to avoid military service or the need to protect his family. The tax mooch is getting rich off it all, at your and my expense. I am glad to think that people are waking up to all this.

PS: I have been less active recently, due to family issues. Wait till you are my age and live in a four generation family, and you will understand.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Lottery accident of the year: Four time winner

See this recent one from Texas.

Also note this lottery tale, from Bulgaria, and this one from a province of Canada.

The Canadians did not buy it.

Fun for the day: White ravens sighted in British Columbia, Canada

Yes, it is true.

While folklore insists that ravens be black, sometimes, colour genes just fall out. One good thing is that the phenomenon was not been attributed, in the linked article, to “Darwin” or “Evolution”. In areas where snow cover lasts many months, absence of colour genes can be a benefit, but it is unlikely to be so on Vancouver Island. My guess is that this is a passing phase.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Interesting items in the intelligent design controversy

I have been really busy due to book and family issues, but here are some items I never had a chance to write up:

1. Has Craig Venter produced artificial life?

Before you decide, consider this.

2. Was Ardi the missing link?

Apparently not. The big question was, why did anyone need to believe it so badly? We may never find the missing link. We certainly should not jump on just any purported example.

3. A friend writes to remind me of "Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress..., which I consider indispensable in understanding what happened in the 20th century, when ideas hatched in the 19th turned deadly. Darwinism had a lot to do with it, because it fomented the idea of treating people like animals.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

The Fitter Race: Yes, It Is Possible to Say Something New About the Nazis . . .

As long as it’s NOT about their love for evolution. It is common to hear that the Nazis utterly lacked morality. Of course, that satisfies deep anger. But is it true? University of California professor Richard Weikart’s recent book, Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), offers an illuminating answer: No.

Hitler’s Ethic (a companion to his From Darwin to Hitler, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) demonstrates that the Nazis indeed had an ethic. It flowed directly and painstakingly from evolutionary theory, as understood in Germany at the time.

I wish I had said this stuff. Come to think of it, I at least reported it here. Subscribe to Salvo, one of the few pubs worth reading these days, if you are not a gorilla somewhere.

Find out why there is an intelligent design controversy:

Intellectual freedom in Canada: The Toronto riots

My own experience of the recent Toronto riots about G8/G20?

I had been warned by two different people I had never met before, in an outlying town, about the risks of returning to Toronto from a family errand that night, even though I had no choice. And Greyhound posted notices saying that it intended to provide service to the downtown terminal, but could give no guarantees.

I am not surprised that the police overreacted.

My experience with police, in general, suggests keeping this in mind: If a drug-addled perp is trying to crash in my door (that actually happened to one of my neighbours years ago), who will I call?

Professor Fancypantsie? Doctor Addled Theory? Reverend Nuance? Joe Mike? Or the local cops? My advice is, be cautious around police doing their duty (whether they are doing it or not must be determined after the crisis). Here's Mark Steyn on the whole business, mediating between Five Feet of Fury and Small Dead Animals re police overreaction.

Hmmm. Here's journalist Steve Paikin:

PAIKIN: I've been watching protests in this city for 30 years. I've been covering events in the city for 30 years. This was not a great day for democracy in Toronto. I saw things I'd never seen before. I saw things that frankly should not have happened. And people will come to their own conclusions about what they believe the state of democracy to be in Toronto and in Canada as a result of what happened. It was a sad bloody day, I'll tell you that much.

Well, if you want to know about the lack of democracy, Steve, try Canada's "human rights" commissions.

But, Steve, there was lots of actual provocation, if you count setting fire to police cruisers, which was bound to annoy the police, as they might be in one at the time. Also, I pay taxes to keep cruisers on the road. If I want fireworks, I'll buy some and set them off in my back yard on Canada Day, not wreck expensive public property and endanger lives.

See, what goes around comes around. The leftists who yap happily in favour when others' rights are violated in "human rights" actions against media - and support dangerous and bloody Middle East causes - are now feeling the blowback themselves.

In other news:

- Franklin Carter, of the Book and Periodical Council of Canada advises

Last month, in Montreal, Jennifer Lynch delivered a speech about the reputation of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC). Lynch, who is the chief commissioner of the CHRC, expressed concerns about the criticism that the CHRC and other human rights commissions have attracted in recent years over their handling of free speech cases. She also described the CHRC's strategy to counter criticism.

Her speaking notes appear on the CHRC's Web site.

I wouldn't doubt it. Welcome to Nineteen Eighty Four, where bureaucrats decide what you can think, and social workers bark happily in support. Remember, the big thing is to love Big Brother and to agree that no matter how many fingers you see held up, you must actually believe that it is another number. Look, as Winston discovered, it's not enough to just lie to them to avoid torture. You must really believe it.

- Carter also tells me that a book called The Shepherd's Daughter is still advocated in schools, despite a controversial dialogue about suicide bombing. I am very uneasy about the decision because, to the extent that it is recommended for grades 7 and 8, I think that people in that age group are not usually in a position to make reasonable decisions, and may well be recruited for disastrous causes.

He quotes,

Challenges to intellectual freedom are never very far from our doorstep. There’s always someone who wants to tell you what to think, believe, or read, because she or he knows better than you do. It’s when that someone seeks to prevent other people’s access to such expressions that we have to be particularly vigilant.

Peter Carver, Freedom of Expression and Freedom to Read (2009)

Fair enough, but when it comes to life and death decisions, I think that older people often do know better. Teenagers are more likely to attempt suicide over a failed romance than elderly widows.

To me, the question is not whether all underage teens should be forbidden access to such materials so much as how their access can be handled with discretion.

- Also, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression are protesting over-policing at the recent G8/G20 summit in Toronto:

CJFE is also disturbed by the treatment of news media workers covering the protests. According to several reports many were detained, charged and in a few cases attacked by police. Among them:

Two National Post photographers Brett Gundlock and Colin O'Connor were arrested and charged;

CTV News Channel producer Farzad Fatholahzadeh was detained;
Freelance journalist Jesse Rosenfeld was beaten and arrested by police;

Liem Vu, an intern with the National Post, and Lisan Jutras, a Globe and Mail journalist, were among those detained for four hours at Queen and Spadina;

Real News journalist Jesse Freeston was punched in the face by a police officer;

Torontoist journalist Wyndham Bettencourt-McCarthy was struck by a police officer with a baton;

Video journalist Brandon Jourdan was thrown to the ground and beaten by police.

CJFE will be monitoring these cases and will update its list if more come to light. To our knowledge, all journalists have now been released.

O'Leary's favourite science books

This question started out as "science and religion" but the religion part got lost somehow, not because I am unreligious but because I wasn't sure how much religion, as such, you can learn from a serious exposition of the reasons for thinking that design is a feature of our universe.

All you can really learn from books about design is that materialist atheism is nuts.And, not surprisingly, all the materialist atheist mooches and tax burdens do everything they can to try to sink design-friendly books in the ratings. Don't usually succeed, of course, but can't blame 'em for trying.

Anyway, here are my five top picks (exempting any book for which - so far as I know - I had anything to do with the text):

1. Michael Denton's Nature's Destiny: Denton discusses the world I know, all the more authentically because he addresses the southern cone, not my beloved northlands. I first got interested in design issues about a decade ago, and Denton's book was a key reason. I was sitting in a bookstore cafe in a northern city, and my brother saw I was interested, so he bought me a gift certificate so I could buy the book. The book just made so much sense. It describes the world I know, where things do not happen simply by chance or survival of the fittest.

2. Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box. When I first encountered the book, I was flush with the success of having landed a science and faith column in a Canadian Christian publication (since, abruptly cancelled). When I first read Behe's book, I was astonished to discover that there is a lot of evidence against Darwinism and little for it - despite endless local obsequious coo's from bible school profs that "there is no conflict between science and religion (even though I knew of theist profs who were at that very time under serious threat.).

The "no conflict" profs really meant, of course, that there is no conflict between Darwinism and Christianity, as the Biologos Institute would have us believe. But, of course, "survival of the fittest" and Christianity are irreconcilable, as I noted when I saw former Biologos golden boy - and still a golden boy in many Christian circles - beaming with joy over human embryonic stem cell research.

I myself was astonished to discover, in interview, how foolish Christian women abandon live human embryos (their early stage children) in fertility clinics, so the kids end up getting processed for - whatever.

And if that is the "religion" part of "no conflict between ...", deal me out right now! Elsewhere, it is called being a "useful idiot." But you will see a lot of it in the Christian press these days.

3. Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial: Still a classic in asking the right, serious questions, principally about the way in which Darwinism became popular culture's icon, and what that actually means.

You can see it if you travel the subway in a major city today - full of tattooed, pierced, unemployable people, absolutely convinced that the "government" owes them a living, because they are the somehow surviving apes. It is hard to know where to begin, in countering this view because it is implicit in their education. Johnson was especially good at skewering "theistic evolution" (= how to sell out to atheism without openly admitting it).

4. Steve Meyer's Signature in the Cell (Harper One, 2009). Meyer explains how new information about the cell shows that Darwinists and "Christian" Darwinists are simply wrong in supposing that Darwin's ingenious "survival of the fittest" explanation shows how intricate machinery can occur with no design at all. Darwin's claim is a complete imposture, and should have occurred to anyone who works for a living, but many British aristocrats like himself in his day and many civil servants and lobbyists today never did practical work, and wouldn't really know why we cannot create intelligence from mere matter by accident.

5. Alfred Russel Wallace's Theory of Intelligent Evolution was one of those books everyone heard of - if they work this beat - but no one had read. After all, Darwin's mob did a pretty good job of wasting his co-theorist Wallace, right? And Wallace's only serious crime was not to be a materialist atheist.

In the world according to Darwin, you are either a materialist atheist or a useful idiot for same.

Wallace understood the world I know much better - not at all surprising, because he was a much better naturalist than Darwin. In the world I know, co-operation matters.

Eighty-five years ago, my devout grandmother told my five-year-old father to follow a turkey hen up into the hills and find out where she was caching her eggs. The trouble was, a coyote could get them. The boy - not much taller than a turkey hen himself - had to follow the hen discreetly, because she would turn around and look at him. But he found the eggs, and his mother promptly put them under a broody chicken hen, in the henhouse, so they could be safely hatched.

(Note: Obviously, I have avoided speaking of any book with which I was in any way involved - so far as I know. Because I work in publishing, it is always possible for some Darwinist sponge or tax burden, with no more useful activities to occupy his time, to pretend some case for my involvement with a book, but, as I always say in such cases, ... pffft.